


Changed

by Katherine



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Matched - Ally Condie
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basi is on my shoulder as a starling, his white-speckled black feathers matching the night sky in my imagining of flight. That my daemon is in the form of a bird gives me the faint sensation of wings, matching my thoughts in another way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changed

Basi is on my shoulder as a starling, his white-speckled black feathers matching the night sky in my imagining of flight. That my daemon is in the form of a bird gives me the faint sensation of wings, matching my thoughts in another way. I think of the myths from before Society of people who could fly. In the painting of them I saw, the gold above their heads was bright like their daemons in bird-shape beside them.

 

When I look around the hall at my Match Banquet, I see my Basi is far from the only daemon taking a form that shows contrast next to his girl's dress, on her shoulder or in her arms.

One boy I think must be shy is all in dark clothes, his daemon curled as a black shrew against his neck, nearly invisible. I'm not sure if that daemon has settled yet.

Usually, Society doesn't assign a permanent job to you until after your daemon has settled. Being Matched, though, that's supposed to happen when your daemon is still able to change forms, but once you're old enough that he's beginning to change less often, more of the time taking the same kind of forms.

Rumor is, the Officials want to have a good sense of what your daemon will be like to properly select your Match. Yet both of you should be changing enough to fit well with your Match, for your daemons to settle together.

My Basi is still taking a lot of different forms, and maybe that's why I feel as though I'm too young to be Matched. But the Officials have so much information about me, about all of us, and they must know best.

 

When I race up the hill, Basi is usually a bird again, one small enough to slip through the trees. Sometimes he tries being an animal that runs beside me, and once or twice now he has tried taking the form of a deer, like Ky's daemon is.

He doesn't know what he'll settle to be, yet. I don't know where I will fit.

Someday my Basi will settle, and that's supposed to be soon, I guess, but until then he should be trying all these different forms.

 

"Once," Ky says quietly, "Society tried not showing us all the animals."

At first, I can't even reply to that. I'm too stunned by the somehow sickening idea of Basi, of _anyone's_ daemon, not having enough forms.

I remember Basi as a lizard, draping himself over my arm, green to match the dress I was choosing.

The same green as a crab, running back and forth in the small space of my cupped hands as I watched Ky's face replace Xander's on the screen as my Matched.

These times on the hill...

We need all the possibilities, and I don't know the shape of my future yet.


End file.
